Daughter, son didn't expect mother's obit to go viral

Sep. 12, 2013

This is the mobile home that Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick occupied in Reno until May. / Tim Dunn/RGJ

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Note to readers

An obituary that appeared in the Sept. 10 Reno Gazette-Journal and on RGJ.com was a paid placement that was submitted via our self-service online portal. From the text of the obituary, it is clear that the date of death is inaccurate. The Washoe County Public Guardian’s office has confirmed that Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick did, indeed, recently die. We’ve removed the online listing of this obituary as we continue our review of the circumstances surrounding its placement. Once we’ve completed our review, we’ll determine what, if any, further actions are required. — John Maher, president and publisher,

Reno Gazette-Journal

Obituaries are paid advertisements that can appear in print or online. In some cases, they are submitted through a self-service portal.RGJ’s policy is to review all obituaries prior to publication to ensure they meet standards of acceptability. RGJ Publisher John Maher said the RGJ is reviewing whether current policies were followed and whether those policies are adequate.

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It did what obituaries don’t do.

Instead of a celebration of a life found in newspapers every day, the obituary for Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick was scathing. The daughter who submitted it held back nothing in the nine-sentence obit that ran Tuesday without a photo: “She is survived by six of her eight children whom she spent her lifetime torturing in every way possible ...”

“On behalf of her children who she so abrasively exposed to her evil and violent life, we celebrate her passing from this earth and hope she lives in the after-life reliving each gesture of violence, cruelty and shame that she delivered on her children.”

Johnson-Reddick’s obituary appeared on RGJ.com and was printed in Tuesday’s paper after being submitted through a self-service online portal. Since then, it has made national news, going viral online and in social media.

Katherine Reddick, 57, said she wrote the obituary about her mother, 78, who died on Aug. 30 at ManorCare Health Services, a Reno nursing home. Her mother had bladder cancer and had become a ward of the state when she became sick and was hospitalized in May. Her cause of death is unknown.

The two were not in contact.

Katherine Reddick, who today works in education in Texas, described a horrific childhood that she and her brothers and sisters endured. Moved from California to Las Vegas to eventually live in an orphanage in Carson City, she described being abused for years by her mother and in multiple foster homes. Reddick said she slept on the floors of places where her mother ran escort businesses.

She and her brother Patrick Reddick, 58, of Minden said they talked about writing the obituary after learning about their mother’s death. Both are graduates of Carson High School.

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They said they did not expect the obituary to garner national attention. On Wednesday, media outlets from around the country tried tracking down their relatives for interviews.

“People may see this as something we did to shame our mother,” Patrick Reddick, the second oldest of eight children, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “But this is to bring shame to the issue of child abuse. I want every single person to realize this could be your obituary.”

Who was she?

Not much is known about the life lived by Johnson-Reddick besides documents provided by the Washoe County Public Guardian and several articles in Reno Gazette-Journal archives.

When Johnson-Reddick was admitted to the hospital in May, she told doctors that she lived with 13 cats in her trailer on Wrondel Way in Reno.

“I was raised by the nuns and priests,” she said of her childhood in a psychiatric evaluation record included in her public guardianship file. “I entered the convent, and I was a sister of Good Shepherd for 8 years. After I left, I got married.”

She also said some of her children died, according to the record.

“The other children went their way. I went my own way, ” she said in the record.

Doctors diagnosed her as having poor memory and judgment, and suffering from dementia and a mood disorder, according to the evaluation record.

One article that ran in 1968 described her applying for a license to operate an escort service in Reno. Other articles described her Ace Secretarial and Printing Services that opened in Reno in 1967 and her Academy Personnel Agency Inc., which was ordered by the state in 1970 to stop classifying job applicants by race.

The city of Reno could not find records related to the businesses on Wednesday.

Lance van Lydegraf, who worked as Johnson-Reddick’s attorney before she died, said she was a longtime paralegal and would often send clients his way many years ago.

In the final months of Johnson-Reddick’s life, van Lydegraf said, it was difficult to find family members to help.

“We would try and locate family members who would be willing to step in and act as her legal guardian for purposes of medical care and financial issues,” he said Wednesday. “In fulfilling those responsibilities, she indicated that there was no one that I could contact.”

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Their childhoods

From 1963 to 1964, six of Johnson-Reddick’s children were admitted to the Nevada Children’s Home in Carson City, the long-standing orphanage that closed in 1992.

The children lived there until they either turned 18, joined the military, got married or were ordered to go back and live with their mother, according to state documents at the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services.

Katherine Reddick was the last sibling to leave the orphanage in April 1974 at the age of 18.

While Johnson-Reddick’s children said they had two other siblings, records were found for just one brother who died as an infant. An article in Reno Gazette-Journal archives said William Patrick Reddick, 16 months old, died in a foster home in Las Vegas in 1964.

Katherine and Patrick Reddick both testified at the Nevada Legislature in the 1980s on bills related to child abuse and the termination of parental rights.

“We were constantly physically, mentally abused even after being taken away and put in the children’s home,” Patrick Reddick said during his testimony in 1987. He said that on weekends, they were sent home to an office on Court Street in Reno, sometimes lined up and beaten with a steel-tipped belt.

Despite being removed from their mother and placed in an orphanage, the court system never tried to terminate parental rights, he said Wednesday.

“It was something that could have given us a life,” Patrick Reddick said. “How do you let a child live in foster care for 14, 15 or more years?”

Patrick said he still hopes someday the rights of children outweigh parental rights.

“The things she did to us were horrible,“ Katherine Reddick said. “But it’s still happening to kids every day.”

Both said one of their sisters died a few years ago, and they don’t keep in touch with the other four. The RGJ was unable to reach the other siblings.

“You can imagine that the lives we lived, it has been hard to have a normal one,” Katherine Reddick said.